Stolen Memories
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: PostEpisode fiction: Evil Breeds Lt. Van Buren returns Leah Glaser's locket to her daughter


J.M.J.  
  
"Stolen Memories"  
  
by "Matrix Refugee"  
  
Author's Note: The title for this comes from a track on the CD of the soundtrack to the movie "Schindler's List", and I couldn't help thinking it applied to the locket Kyle Mellors stole from Leah Glazer when he killed her. Obviously the writers couldn't put everything into that episode, so I thought I'd write a "lost" scene from "Evil Breeds".  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own "Law & Order", it's plots, characters, etc., which belong to Wolf Films, NBC, et al. I'm not sure of the first name of Leah Glazer's daughter, so I called her Chayah here  
  
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"My mother was a survivor... not like when they say 'I'm a survivor' when they've been through a divorce," Chayah Glazer-Meisner explained to Police Lieutenant Anita Van Buren.  
  
"She was in a camp?" Lt. Van Buren asked.  
  
Mrs. Meisner nodded. "All she had left from her life... before the war was a locket with her mother and father's pictures inside.... I don't know how she held onto it during the war... She wanted me to give it to my daughter..." The younger woman tried to keep her face calm and her voice steady, but her face gathered with worry and her tone wobbled with pent-up tears.  
  
Lt. Van Buren leaned closer to Mrs. Meisner. "If we recover the locket, I'll see that you get it back." It was a promise she doubted could be kept, unless they found the killer. Many murderers took something from their victims as a trophy. Even then, they might not be able to find it.  
  
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If inanimate objects could be considered survivors, then the locket, too, was a survivor. Leah Glaser, or Leah Binder, had hidden it in a pocket of her coat the day the SS had "relocated" her family from the Warsaw Ghetto. A woman on the train that carried Leah and her sister Rivekah to the camp at Bobrek had given Leah a condom and shown her how to use it to hide the locket "up inside". Leah hadn't liked the idea, but the woman told her that if she didn't do it, the Germans would take it away from her, just for the silver.   
  
Once they reached Bobrek, Leah had taken the locket out and hidden it in chink between the rafters and the roof slates of the barrack where she and her sister slept. Papa and Mama had disappeared; soon all Leah had of her family were the pictures inside the locket. The night the guard, Stefan Anders, shot Rivekah, Leah sat huddled on her bunk, crying, clasping the locket, too shaken and frightened to sleep...  
  
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"The People present Exhibit C," Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy announced to the courtroom, as he held up a heavy duty clear plastice bag, sealed with a docket label identifying it. Inside was a round antique silver locket on a medium-weight chain. "Mr. Anders, do you recognize this item?"  
  
The defendant Stefan Anders, a white-haired man with an almost patrician face, only lightly marked by the passage of time, looked at the evidence intently. "Yes, it is a silver locket."  
  
"Do you know who it belongs to?"  
  
Anders hesitated, his deep blue eyes growing shinier with fear for a moment. "I was told that it belonged to Leah Glaser."  
  
"And who told you this?"  
  
Anders glanced toward Jensen, his lawyer. "It was Kyle Mellors."  
  
"Then how did Leah Glaser's locket come to be found in your apartment by the detectives who searched it?"  
  
Anders touched his lower lip with the tip of his tongue, putting his thoughts together. "Mr. Mellors sent it to me... I had told him I had tried to speak to Mrs. Glaser, that I had told her she had mistaken me for another guard when she testified against me to the OSI. He told me not to worry, that he would see to it that she would say no more to them that could damage my case... I did not know what he intended to do... Some days later, he had a courier bring the package with the locket in it to my apartment... I called him on the telephone, and I asked him why he had sent this to me... He told me that it was proof that Leah would be silent."  
  
"Did he tell you he'd killed her?"  
  
"No. But that night, on the television, I saw a news report that Mrs. Glaser had been killed. I hoped that he had not done this, but how else could he have obtained her locket?"  
  
"Nothing further," McCoy said, turning away from the defendant and setting the evidence bag back onto the table behind him, smoothing the plastic down carefully over the locket.  
  
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A week passed after the trial. Kyle Mellors had been sentenced to life in prison, and Stefan Anders had been placed under house arrest pending his deportation. Chayah Meisner had almost finished sorting through her mother's things before she went back to Israel, when someone knocked at the door. She went to look out and see who it was before she opened the door.  
  
Lt. Van Buren stood in the hallway, her badge clipped to the lapel of her coat. "Mrs. Meisner? It's Lieutenant Van Buren; I have something that belongs to you."  
  
Chayah hesitated. A flood of relief passed over her, but a wave of pain moved in under it. Her hands shook as she undid the chain, then the deadbolt before opening the door. "I-I'm sorry: I almost didn't hear you. I've been sorting through everything, trying to figure out what to keep, what to give away..." She stepped back, letting the Lieutenant enter. "I'm sorry... the place is a mess."  
  
Lt. Van Buren smiled wryly but reassuringly. "It's all right: I've seen places that looked a lot worse than a little clutter."  
  
Growing serious again, she reached into one of the deep pockets of her coat and took out a plastic evidence bag. She unsealed it, and took out the locket, holding it carefully in the palm of her hand, the chain loosely looped around her fingers. "I promised you I'd see that you got this back if we recovered it."  
  
Chayah stuttered a reply of gratitude, which sounded incoherent in her own ears. She took the locket, holding it in the palm of her own hand.  
  
She started crying then... sorrow... loss... relief... Lt. Van Buren put her arm about Chayah's trembling shoulders. Chayah let it stay there.  
  
At length her tears passed and Chayah slid her shoulder out from under Lt. Van Buren's arm. "Thank you... You can't know what this means to me..."  
  
The lieutenant shrugged. "I was just doing my job," she said. But Chayah could tell by an undertone in the taller woman's voice that even she knew this gesture was more than just part of the job.  
  
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Chayah returned to Israel later that week, carrying the locket around her neck. On returning to her home in Haifa, she called her daughter Ara, an eighteen year-old pilot in training with the Israeli Air Force.  
  
"Can you get a few days' furlough?" Chayah asked. "There's something I need to give you."  
  
"I'll see what I can do," Ara replied, her tone uncertain. There'd been so much trouble and unrest lately it was nearly impossible for anyone on active duty or in training to take a leave for even the most personal reasons.  
  
A week later, Ara came home. Chayah told her daughter the whole sad, sordid story about her Nana's death. Ara's face grew hard with anger, but even that didn't hide the tears at the corners of her eyes.  
  
Chayah undid the clasp of the locket and took it from her neck. "Here... she wanted you to have it."  
  
Ara took it and draped the chain around her own neck, fastening the clasp, then tucking the locket under her drab-green military blouse. "I'll wear it with pride," she said, firmly.  
  
"No, wear it to remember..." Chayah said. "She would want it that way...."  
  
The End 


End file.
